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Sandwell Socialists Destroy the Environment Again

Eternal vigilance is needed to prevent socialist scheming and nowhere more than in the one party state that is Sandwell. The Socialist mind set is an arrogant belief that it knows what is best for people and a contempt for any popular contrary views. They think only the rulers know what is good for the ruled. This is the position of Sandwell council regarding expansion of Powke Lane cemetery.

In the battle against climate change, the preservation of green spaces is an obvious need. To combat child obesity with its threat to health, which is a significant local problem, the recreational opportunities provided by green spaces have to be encouraged. Instead Sandwell destroys those opportunities along with the areas which provide them.

The approach of Sandwell’s socialist council is to destroy green spaces for bogus short term advantage and to achieve short sighted solutions, regardless of environmental considerations.

Last year plans to expand Powke Lane cemetery and, in the process, to destroy a well used recreational open space, produced widespread opposition in the local area and across the borough. We made the point, then, that destruction of Londonderry fields, Lion Park farm and the Powke Lane plan were all ill considered knee jerk reactions putting a vanity project, a profit making scheme and a politically motivated sop before environmental and health considerations.

In face of this opposition the council retreated on Powke Lane to consider alternative provision. Or so it said. It now appears that this was another shabby socialist trick. Once local elections were over and opposition to the Powke Lane project seemed neutralised, Sandwell council reverted to type and its original destructive plans. The Powke Lane scheme even runs counter to the local authority’s own strategic plan. Because of this, it will be debated in full council tonight rather than left to a planning committee.

If that meeting resembles the careless abandon with which the council took the decision to destroy Londonderry fields, it’s stretching the term debate to cover the succession of grunts with which the unworthies carry on business at full council. Having been feed and watered at public expense, 90+% of the mechanical nodding dogs who pass for Labour councillors in Sandwell are unlikely to do anything but approve the proposal. One or two of the more dynamic will say something stupid or grovelling in support of the scheme and that will be it. More environmental destruction will be visited on the borough.

Cllr. Bob Lloyd, the cabinet member responsible for the project, has already delivered the feeble justification that Sandwell is running out of burial space and that residents do not wish to see “loved ones” buried outside the borough. An emotional argument which seems to confuse Sandwell with some after death paradise.

The truth is that burial, if it entails land taken from a more socially productive use, is anti-social, given the alternative of cremation, and not to be encouraged. The interests of the living and of future generations must prevail.

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